The Summer Everything Changed

by Holly Chamberlin

  Louise fought with her eyes, which insisted on closing, but she knew it was a fight she was not going to win. She got off the bed and went down to the kitchen.

  “Knock, knock.”

  Louise turned to find Catherine, and her dog, Charlie, at the kitchen door.

  Catherine King was fifty, an early retiree from a very successful career as what Louise thought of, without any disrespect, as a “corporate something or other.” She was a bit shorter than Louise but taller than Isobel (not hard to do, according to Isobel herself). Her hair, once bright red, had deepened in color to a sort of burgundy, and she wore it tied back or up in an old-fashioned but becoming French twist. Her eyes were very green and her skin was very white. Though she spent a fair amount of time outdoors these days, a lot of it painting en plein air, she managed to avoid burning or tanning through a combination of sunblock and protective clothing. “If I’m an object of ridicule in my long sleeves and floppy hats, so be it,” she pronounced. “So far I’m the only one in my immediate family who hasn’t gotten skin cancer.”

  “Any room at the inn?” Catherine asked.

  “Yes, and I was just about to make some coffee.”

  “Ah, music to my ears. Any water for Charlie?”

  Catherine rarely went anywhere without her dog, Princess Charlene, a five-year-old chocolate lab she had found at a shelter shortly before moving to Ogunquit from a wealthy suburb of Hartford, Connecticut. Her career had kept her too often on the road and too busy to be a proper parent to an animal, especially to a dog. Now that she was retired she was reveling in her first adult relationship with a four-footed creature.

  “Why Princess Charlene?” Isobel had asked when Catherine had first come to Ogunquit, only months after Louise and Isobel had established residence.

  “Because that poor young woman seemed so in need of rescuing for a time, remember?” Catherine had said. “Just like my baby. Mind you, I don’t so much think that Princess Charlene of Monaco needs saving anymore. She seems to have found her footing.”

  Isobel loped into the kitchen just then.

  “Hi, Catherine, bye, Catherine. Hi, Princess Charlene, bye.”

  She was out the back door in a flash.

  “Does Isobel ever sit still?” Catherine said. “That’s a rhetorical question.”

  Louise placed a French press pot of coffee on the table, along with two mugs. Both women took their coffee black. “Only when she’s writing her blog. And then her leg is bouncing.”

  “Huh. Lucky gal, she’ll probably never have to diet.” Catherine took a sip of her coffee. “Ah, that’s magic,” she said. “You know, even though you and Isobel look nothing alike, there’s no mistaking you for anything other than mother and daughter. It’s a look in the eye or something. It’s really quite extraordinary. Two peas in a pod. The apple not falling far from the tree.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Just uh-huh? What’s on your mind?”

  Louise drained half of her cup of coffee and then told her friend about the phone call from the celebrity couple’s wedding planner. Catherine listened without comment.

  “And the next thing I knew,” Louise finished, “I was saying yes. I think she mesmerized me. There was something odd about her voice, something compelling, almost threatening. It was like I didn’t dare say no!”

  “Have you signed a contract yet?” Catherine asked.

  “No, I haven’t seen it yet, so technically I’m still in the clear if I decide to change my mind. Though, for all I know Flora Michaels could have the power and prestige to blacken my name if I did bail now . . .”

  Catherine shook her head. “You won’t change your mind.”

  “Who says I won’t? This is a huge commitment. Maybe too huge for me.”

  “I say you won’t. You’d be nuts not to grab this challenge. This could set you up for years to come. You could really make it big. And other clichés denoting success.”

  “What if I don’t want to make it big?” Louise argued, pouring herself another half cup of coffee. “What if I’m fine just making it medium?”

  “Medium is boring.”

  “Maybe for you. I’ve always kind of liked medium. It’s comfortable and—”

  “Boring. Anyway, when the contract comes in, you had better let me review it. Lord knows I’ve reviewed a contract or two in my time.”

  “Would you? I’d be grateful. I don’t think I’ve ever read a contract in my life. Dealing with the mortgage papers on this place almost sent me to a rest home.”

  “What are friends for if not sharing expertise?”

  “What expertise do I share with you?” Louise asked, genuinely curious.

  Catherine made a show of considering the question, twisting her mouth and wrinkling her nose. “I don’t know. I’ll have to give it some thought. In the meantime I will admit that you make good coffee.”

  “Well, that’s something.”

  Catherine stood. “Come on, Charlie. We’ve wasted enough of Louise’s time. She’s got a celebrity wedding to plan.”

  Charlie finished slopping water onto the kitchen floor and led Catherine out the door.

  Louise smiled to herself. Being with Catherine, even if only for a few minutes, always cheered her. And having someone she considered a best friend was almost a brand-new experience for her. It wasn’t until she was muddling through the divorce that Louise realized she hadn’t had a best friend in years, maybe not since grammar school.

  Sure, there had been the women she volunteered with, and the mothers of Isobel’s classmates, but there had never been anyone really intimate. And she had never spent much time wondering why she had no close female friends. Her life was very full without them; besides, she had always considered Andrew the best friend she could ever have.

  And look how that had turned out! A woman should never sacrifice female friends for the sake of a male friendship, even that of a husband. There was plenty of good emotional energy to go around. You just had to use it. Too bad Louise had learned that lesson so late in her life.

  Catherine was, Louise thought, a good role model for Isobel. Not that she herself was so bad a role model, but Isobel’s having several older women she could admire and try to emulate couldn’t hurt. Louise’s own mother hadn’t been much of an inspiration, though she had been a kind and loving woman. She had been fearful by nature and had grown increasingly timid as she aged. When Louise wasn’t finding her mother and her trepidations supremely annoying, she was finding them pitiful. Neither feeling had made her think of herself as a good or dutiful daughter.

  But enough of the past. Louise sat at the kitchen table and opened her laptop. There was an inn to run, guests to satisfy, and a celebrity wedding to host. Assuming, of course, that she was capable of doing such things . . .

  Louise stared blankly at the screen saver; it was a photo of Isobel at the age of two. Once again, she was overcome by an awful feeling that she was reaching too far. The hospitality industry was a notoriously fickle business, not for the faint of heart or those without serious financial backing. And in Louise’s case, she felt the added pressure of proving to her ex-husband that she, too, could be successful in business.

  Besides, if she failed and lost the business, what then? She would have to get a regular job (if she could find one; she had been out of the workforce for over sixteen years), and that meant uprooting Isobel once again. Even if she decided that it was financially smarter to stay on in Maine, they couldn’t stay in Ogunquit. They would have to move north, maybe to South Portland, somewhere more affordable than a vacation destination.

  No, Louise thought, determinedly opening one of her accounting files. Isobel had been through too much upheaval already. Louise would have to make the Blueberry Bay Inn and their life in Ogunquit work. She remembered all too clearly what Isobel had gone through in the months after her father’s defection—the sleepless nights, the crying jags. Isobel blamed her father for having hurt her mother and for having wantonly destroyed what wa
s, in her opinion, a perfect family.

  “I hate him,” she had declared to her mother, days after her father had moved out of their home and into one of those sterile furnished apartments in downtown Boston, meant for people in town on extended business trips and/or those in Andrew Bessire’s unhappy situation.

  “Don’t hate him,” Louise had said, fighting her own feelings of despair. “Be angry if you need to be. I am. I probably will be for a long time. But don’t hate your father.”

  “Don’t you hate Dad right now?” Isobel had demanded.

  “No,” Louise had said, honestly. “Hate is exhausting and it’s unproductive. I hated someone once—you know who I’m talking about—and it didn’t help me heal. It was only when I forced myself to let go of the hate that I got better inside.”

  Isobel had known that her mother was referring to the man who had stolen her innocence, the college boyfriend who had repeatedly hit her until one day, in an attempt to escape his anger, Louise had accidentally stumbled down a flight of stairs and wound up in the hospital with a concussion, a broken wrist, a cracked rib, and a fractured ankle. What Isobel didn’t know and might never know was that that episode had cost the life of Louise’s unborn child. Her first daughter, the one she had not been able to protect.

  “Well, I hate Dad right now,” Isobel had declared, “and I think I have a right to!”

  Louise had let that outburst go without comment. Maybe Isobel did have a right to hate her father. Anyway, you really couldn’t legislate emotions. What a person felt, she felt.

  “And don’t tell me that you forgive Dad for cheating on you,” Isobel had added.

  “I’m working on it,” she had told her daughter.

  “Why bother?” Isobel asked.

  “Because forgiveness is good for your peace of mind,” Louise had recited. She believed that. She did.

  Well, Isobel had come a long way since those first painful months. She was nothing if not resilient; it seemed to Louise that Isobel had been born that way. She only hoped that as Isobel aged and life took its occasionally brutal toll, she would never entirely lose that sense of wonderment and enthusiasm for life that marked her as special.

  Louise closed the laptop, got up from the table, and grabbed her car keys from the hook on the wall. She had dallied with her thoughts long enough; there was so much work to be done. Right after she inspected the room that had been prepared for the new guest checking in later, she would drive to the Hannaford in York and raid the magazine section for wedding-related publications. She had learned long ago, in the early days of giving dinner parties for Andrew’s colleagues and their spouses, that when all domestic inspiration failed, you turned to Martha Stewart.

  Chapter 4

  CITYMOUSE

  Dear Lovely Readers:

  Help! Sartorial crisis!

  Just the other day while rummaging through Miss Kit-a-Cat’s closet (with permission, of course), I came across a pair of dark red cowboy-like ankle boots. I say cowboy-like and not full-blown cowboy because the designer (a name I didn’t recognize) sort of nodded at the Cowboy Boot and then did his (or her or their) own thing with it. Which is totally fine by me because not only am I not a cowboy/girl, I also don’t play one on TV. (Hmmm . . . though that might be fun.)

  So here comes the crisis. Miss Kit-a-Cat gifted me the boots, which she says she forgot she even had and had never worn because they were too small. (The boots were a gift. I have no other details so they must be top secret!) But neither the gifting nor the forgetting is the crisis. The crisis is that I don’t know how to wear them!!!! Meaning, red cowboy-ish boots could, in some situations, be really, really tacky in the not-cool-at-all sort of way. You would think that with my vast experience dressing myself, I of all people, City Mouse herself, would be able to meet this dilemma with vigor and a sense of, “no biggie, I’ll figure it out,” but that’s not what’s happening at all! Quelle horreur!

  Here’s Gwen’s portrait of said boots. Nice, huh? And the heel is a perfect height for daily walking wear. (I’ve been clomping around the inn wearing the boots in place of slippers, just to get their feel—but only when the guests are out, of course!)

  Any and all assistance in this matter of vital importance would be greatly appreciated, so start sending me your brilliant ideas. I just know there’s an ensemble out there, taking form in someone’s creative mind, that includes the red cowboy-ish boots.

  Au revoir for now!

  Isobel posted the blog after one last check for unintended grammatical errors (intentional grammatical errors were sometimes allowed) and closed the laptop. She experienced a feeling of intense satisfaction when she had completed a piece of writing. Well, only if she thought the piece had merit.

  Isobel thought often about how writing was a lot like acting (not that she had ever done any acting, but she was making an educated guess), meaning that even “your voice” on paper was only one of your voices or only one way your voice could sound at any given time. So even when you were writing in your journal, supposedly with only your own self as an audience, you were speaking to yourself with another self or another version of your listening self. It was inevitable, she thought, and kind of freaky. How did you ever get down to an authentic, totally normal, and real voice? Maybe you couldn’t. Maybe it didn’t matter. This sort of puzzling dilemma was one of the things Isobel really enjoyed about writing. There was such weirdness and ambiguity to it all, even when you were being hyper aware of style and grammar and rules. Odd turns of phrase and disturbing, alien thoughts could intrude and change the entire tenor of what it was you were trying to say—or what it was you thought you had wanted to say. It was true, from what Isobel had found, that you only really discovered your topic or your message through the act of writing. Strange.

  Isobel came back to earth at the sound of a car in the driveway. She guessed it was Gwen; she had said she would try to stop by around now. She dashed downstairs and out onto the porch to see her friend getting out of her car.

  Gwen Ryan-Roberts was a year older and a grade ahead of Isobel. She was also about a head taller and a good deal wider. Her face was downright cherubic—full cheeks, sparkling brown eyes, and dimples when she smiled—but Gwen liked to set off the angelic aspect of her appearance with short hair dyed a different improbable color every week. At the moment she was sporting a lilac mass; the week before her hair had been kelly green. She was also somewhat of a master makeup artist and could drastically change her look with a few artful strokes of a brush or pencil. Today, black eyeliner and heavy false lashes had given her a sultry air. If the sultry eyes didn’t exactly work with the pastel hair, that was a decision Gwen had made consciously. She described her style as “inconsistent” and “provocative.”

  Gwen and her brother had been adopted by Will Ryan and Curtis Roberts, Gwen when she was six and Ricky years later, when he was only eighteen months. He was now ten. Gwen hadn’t known her brother until he came to live with the Ryan-Robertses. He was, in biological fact, her half brother. Ricky’s father was Puerto Rican; Gwen’s dad was, as Gwen put it, a mutt, someone of indeterminate cultural roots, a bit Irish, a bit German, a bit English, a bit whatever. The mother, about whom Gwen spoke with a frown, was an on-again, off-again drug addict. That was all that needed to be said about her.

  “I kind of like not knowing much about where I come from,” she had explained to Isobel early on in their friendship. “I mean, my fathers have the names of my biological parents, and some basic medical information. But honestly, I don’t care about knowing more. I have a feeling I’d be disappointed if I did. Besides, I have two loving parents right there with me at home. No, I’m happy right where I am.”

  Isobel waved as Gwen climbed the stairs to the porch.

  “Nice day, huh?” Isobel said.

  Gwen shrugged. “If you like sunny and warm, with a good breeze, sure.”

  Their childhoods had been so very different. While Isobel had been living the pampered life of a suburban o
nly child, complete with two-week summer swimming camps and brand-new clothes each season and her own spacious room with private bathroom, Gwen had been transferred among several lower middle class, hardworking foster parents, forced to be content with crowded public swimming pools and hand-me-down clothes, and the cramped family bathroom down the hall. But the girls had emerged from their respective childhoods with intelligence and curiosity and kindness and passionate interests in common—style, shopping, and the arts.

  Today Gwen was wearing a kimono-inspired top in cobalt and emerald and black over black leggings. In an odd way, it complemented Isobel’s simply styled but vibrantly colored maxi-dress—more cobalt, a dash of jade, and a hint of what might be called peridot or spring green. That happened pretty often, as if, Isobel thought, the girls were on the same sartorial wavelength.

  They sat side by side on the top step of the porch.

  “I just posted the red boot dilemma,” Isobel informed her friend.

  “Life is tough for CityMouse, isn’t it?”

  “Ha-ha. How’s Ricky?”

  “He’s fine. Loving day camp, especially the archery lessons.”

  Isobel’s eyes widened. “They let a child handle a real weapon?”

  Gwen shrugged. “Blunt-tip arrows? Believe me, for what my parents are paying, I’m sure the camp takes all sorts of precautions. And, has all sorts of insurance.”

  “Huh. Hey, so I have big news.” Isobel told Gwen about the celebrity wedding Blueberry Bay Inn would be hosting later in the summer.

  “Yikes,” was her first response. “Your mom is a tough cookie to take on Hollywood types. They’re different from you and me, you know.”

  “Oh, it won’t be that bad. Weddings are happy occasions.” Even, Isobel thought, her father’s wedding back in December, exactly a week before Christmas, had been a happy occasion. Well, for him if not entirely for her.